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Asia-Pacific (APAC)—home to some of the most heat-stressed countries—is experiencing the consequences of the climate crisis more deeply than others. Over the past 60 years, temperatures in APAC have increased faster than the global average, resulting in more intense and frequent unpredictable weather events and climate-related hazards. Yet, climate financing to address these challenges remains insufficient. In the region’s developing countries, the current flow of adaptation finance falls short by 14-20 times[1]. Funding for global climate technology, while having surged 40x over the past decade to address the global priority of climate mitigation, additional financing also needs to be unlocked for supporting the adaptation solutions.
Continued public sector support is essential to addressing these gaps, especially given that policy incentives and frameworks help encourage investment from other quarters. Private sector finance is equally crucial, as it can supplement the limited capacity of the public sector. While the first article in this series explored the role of social investments in helping build adaptive capacities and the second delved into the need to focus on adaptation efforts alongside mitigation, this article seeks to illustrate the merits of emerging digital technologies to achieve these ends.
Why digital technology offers an exciting opportunity for social investors
Digital technologies are fast emerging as solutions that can help at-risk communities better anticipate and adapt to changing climatic conditions, cutting across key adaptation themes such as food and water security, public health safety, and disaster risk reduction. Social investors have the opportunity to strengthen climate action by supporting widespread development, deployment, and adoption of these technologies.
Here is how digital technologies can accelerate development, with co-benefits to mitigation and adaptation:
Digital technologies can reduce implementation costs and enhance scalability for adaptation action. They do this by disseminating information to vulnerable communities in areas that are harder or costlier to reach through offline channels, especially in the aftermath of climatic events that damage physical health and transportation infrastructure.
They can streamline data communication and coordination, leading to a swifter—and, in some cases, more proactive—response. Improving response time also helps reduce economic and non-economic losses during climate-related extreme events. According to estimates from the World Meteorological Association, damage by disasters could decrease by 30% if an early warning is issued 24 hours in advance of the onset of extreme weather events.
They also facilitate real-time data collection and analysis, empowering users to respond effectively in dynamic environments. For instance, tools for managing crop health can provide farmers with timely advice. This includes adjusting irrigation schedules and optimising pest management strategies based on real-time and local data, amid increasing uncertainty in determining climatic patterns.
However, climate technology funding predominantly targets innovations in developed countries. In 2022, global funding for climate tech stood at USD 70 billion —an 89% increase from the previous year —yet APAC received only 16% of these investments[2]. Hence, targeted efforts are needed to ensure sufficient funding reaches APAC for advancing crucial adaptation technologies. Further, these efforts need to be focused on areas that are most vulnerable to climate impacts and have implications for critical services and infrastructure vital for supporting economic growth and community well-being.
Digital solutions are increasingly showing potential across key adaptation areas
In our research, we identified four thematic areas most relevant to Asia-Pacific—namely, agriculture, water resources, disaster management, and public health. We then assessed their climate vulnerabilities, arriving at suggested digital applications that can improve resilience for each sector. Our report shines a light on five such emerging use cases across these sectors, assessing the maturity of these technologies in APAC and pinpointing areas for intervention (Figure 1). It scratches the surface of what is possible for adaptation efforts and provides a starting point for social investors looking to invest in adaptation technology.
- Weather forecasting and modelling
Weather forecasting and modelling technologies process vast amounts of data collected by satellites, sensors, or even smartphones, to provide accurate insights into changing climatic conditions. They help stakeholders adapt their strategies through applications in regional weather monitoring and forecast, hyperlocal weather observation systems, communication platforms for extreme weather events, and long-term climate-weather observatories.
For instance, Wasm—a Jordanian regional weather monitoring and forecasting company that helps companies and businesses improve their bottom line by mitigating the effects caused by severe weather events—has a forecasting accuracy of up to 80% and has allowed clients to save up to 70% of their yearly weather-associated costs.
However, while the deployment of weather data collection at a regional scale is mature, applications with capabilities to communicate climate risks in real-time are still evolving. There is room to improve the granularity of weather data. Additionally, cross-regional collaborations can aid transboundary weather-related monitoring, forecasting, and decision-making.
- Resource monitoring and management
These technologies facilitate the monitoring of critical resources such as soil, water and air through remote sensing or Geographic Information System-based tech. The integration of digital communication tools, such as virtual dashboards and phone-based applications, can aid in real-time communication of information.
In APAC, most innovations for this use case relate to water quality and water resource management. WaterIQ, developed by Indonesian NGO Yayasan Solar Chapter, is one such example. It leverages IoT and cloud computing to monitor solar-powered water systems and anticipate pump maintenance needs in the East Nusa Tenggara province. Blockchain-based data-keeping is also increasing data transparency in resource tracking and reporting. However, further advancements are needed to better integrate real-time monitoring with prediction technologies. There is also a need to build the capacity of government authorities to better integrate climate informatics into management systems.
- Disaster preparedness and response
Disaster preparedness and response systems use advanced sensors, satellites, and real-time analytics to enable disaster prediction, early warning systems, and relief and response.
India-based non-profit Mahila Housing Trust is developing one such AI/ML prediction model to determine the likelihood of floods in close collaboration with local communities. Meanwhile, social enterprise Nepal Flying Labs’ drones, which helped assess the damage caused by the 2023 Earthquake in Jajarkot, exemplify technology’s potential to aid rehabilitation efforts.
While AI algorithms for disaster forecasting show promise, more testing and refining to support local data availability is necessary. Further, regional testing on disaster communications can improve access to relay systems for timely, easy-to-interpret information. Collaborations with government authorities are crucial to creating sustainable business-to-government models that build investor confidence.
- Agricultural optimisation
This refers to technologies that process information related to soil health, irrigation, and crop conditions to foster supply chain resilience and boost productivity for farmers. Its applications include crop health management, irrigation efficiency, precision agriculture, and supply chain resilience. Indian Agri Tech startup CultYvate’s SMART automated irrigation system serves as an example of applications that improve irrigation efficiency: its predictive insights have demonstrated a 16% increase in agricultural yield and ~USD 1,000 per hectare in additional income for farmers.
In APAC, IoT-based devices demonstrate commercial readiness and are widely integrated into precision agriculture, providing real-time data on crop health conditions. Automation technologies, ranging from robotics to sensor-linked devices, also hold promise. However, their scalability hinges on thorough pilots and validation across geographic regions.
- Climate and health intelligence systems
Climate and health intelligence systems can track parameters such as temperature, air quality, or disease outbreaks to enhance preparedness against climate-related health risks. It includes applications for disease outbreak prediction, early diagnostics for climate-health risks, real-time public health monitoring, and workforce safety. The NGO-backed Geospatial Indicators Dashboard, for instance, monitors and provides real-time data on key parameters affecting health, such as air quality or extreme heat, across 23 cities in nine countries.
While APAC faces the urgent need to strengthen these systems, given the region’s high disease burden, there is a need for greater localisation of data sets. Climate-health dashboards require localised, real-time data to guide targeted decisions and information dissemination. Similarly, innovations using sensors to monitor climate and health hazards in public spaces and workplaces must be adapted to address the emerging climate-related health impacts and local conditions effectively.
So, how can social investors unlock this potential?
Despite the promise of these technologies, deployment at scale is limited by the lack of knowledge on climate impact pathways, compelling business cases for investing in adaptation technologies, supportive policy environments, and a reliable digital infrastructure ecosystem in climate-vulnerable geographies. Broadly, there are two ways in which social investors can help overcome these challenges (Figure 2):
- They can directly invest in climate technologies
Social investors can consider offering foundational support to early-stage solutions through research grants, innovation funds, and other pre-seed capital. This can include solutions focused on generating evidence on the impact of climate change on social sectors through research and development and local data collection.
They can promote solutions that refine AI-driven analytics and enable their integration into local-scale data collection through concessional debt, early-stage equity, or blended instruments. In cases of proven digital solutions, social investors can help scale and deliver these solutions to resource-constrained communities through performance-based grants or return-seeking debt and equity.
Moreover, they can fund the building and strengthening of digital infrastructure for climate resilience as well as digital infrastructure that is climate resilient.
Increasingly, we are starting to see creative ways to finance these innovations by pooling various forms of capital to support solutions throughout their development stages, from pre-seed to growth. Blended finance, for instance, combines patient, risk-tolerant investments with those seeking financial returns, effectively enabling holistic support. Investors can consider adopting such approaches to facilitate the scaling up of solutions that show early evidence of impact and scalability.
- They can invest in ecosystem building to support climate technologies
An important pillar of ecosystem building is policy advocacy. This includes advocating for the integration of digital technology deployment into national climate strategies and the development of robust sectoral policies that encourage open data generation and sharing among state agencies, private sector innovators, and local communities.
Social investors can also push states to establish ‘regulatory sandboxes’ to streamline the development, testing, and wide-scale deployment of adaptation innovations. Moreover, they can advocate for regulation of AI to tackle risks, such as data privacy breaches or algorithmic biases, and for policies that emphasise standardisation in data collection.
Other ecosystem-building initiatives include facilitating improved access to open data, knowledge- and capacity-building among investors and disseminating proof of concepts, enhancing the capacity of local authorities, and partnering with local communities to foster engagement with resilience-building technologies.
Accelerating efforts on these fronts is key to addressing the challenges that hinder the deployment of climate technologies at scale. Initiatives such as the APAC Sustainability Seed Fund 2.0 seek to bring together social investors and philanthropists to facilitate knowledge-sharing and overcome some of these systemic barriers. Further, AVPN’s report on Harnessing The Power Of Digital Technologies For Climate Adaptation shines a spotlight on these emerging solutions for APAC and presents investors with a four-step framework to identify the right opportunities and guide their investment decisions.
Supportive policy environments can significantly accelerate the development and deployment of digital technologies for climate adaptation, ultimately helping communities become more resilient to the impacts of climate change. AVPN will continue with the support of Google.org and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to enhance understanding and build consensus on critical policies among governments, investors, and technology service providers. This collaborative effort aims to expedite the development, deployment, and commercialisation of digital solutions to effectively address climate change challenges.
[1] United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Adaptation Gap Report 2023, 2023.
[2] PWC, State of Climate Tech, 2023.
